1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention relate to a method and system for dynamically re-directing a hosting service environment of a virtual object in response to a movement of an Internet of Things (IoT) device.
2. Description of the Related Art
The Internet of Things (IoT) has been evolved from an existing Ubiquitous Sensor Network (USN) or Machine to Machine (M2M). The primary goal of the existing M2M has been to achieve communication between an end device and a person. In contrast, the goal of the IoT is to expand the scope of things and thereby enables communication between a person and things such as a telephone, a book, and a thermometer, which persons can easily view. That is, the IoT indicates a thing-space connecting network that cooperatively forms an intellectual relationship, such as sensing, networking, and information processing, without an explicit intervention of a person with respect to three distributed environmental elements, i.e., a person, a thing, and a service.
In addition to the IoT, various concepts and technologies, such as Web of Things (WeB) and Web of Objects (WoO), have been studied and also under development. The development and spread of the concepts and the technologies will bring an increase in the use of devices, for example, a gadget device, a sensor device, and an actuator, users can easily connect to the Internet.
In particular, various types of web-interactive gadget devices are recently released. Many sensor devices are providing controlling and monitoring functions through a web. Additionally, terminals to provide a control function through a web are embedded with a web server function or include a function controllable through an online web service.
However, in the current situations, the aforementioned technologies, devices, or services are individually managed, thereby causing user inconveniences. For example, although a plurality of devices is present around a user, the user may need to control each of the devices through an individual access path, for example, a uniform resource locator (URL). When a device itself provides a web access function, for example, a server function, a network interaction and a URL, for example, an Internet protocol (IP) address for an access to an individual device are required. When a service is provided through an exclusive web service, a generation of an access right and a URL are required for each service.
Further, data individually managed may not be readily used through an organic interaction. For example, in the case of a sensor configured to control a boiler inside a house, ambient environment information directly collectable by a sensor device is significantly limited. That is, limited information such as presence/absence of a person indoors, an indoor temperature, and a time zone may be collected. If the sensor device is capable of additionally using outside information, for example, an outdoor temperature and user schedule information, the sensor device may provide a further effective control function. However, since data is individually managed for each technology, each device, or each service, it may be difficult to use such data through an organic interaction between the data.
FIG. 1 illustrates a method of providing a service when a device includes an embedded web server according to the related art. A user may access an embedded web server 140 embedded in a device 130, for example, an IoT node, of a physical world 120 through an online 110, for example, a web. Here, since the embedded web server 140 is included in the device 130, data generated by the device 130 and all of process logics to process a predetermined function or service are included in the device 130. Accordingly, it is impossible to provide a service interacting with or fused with data of another service coverage or another service, beyond a service coverage provided from the device 130.
FIG. 2 illustrates a method of providing a service when a manufacturer provides a separate web server online according to the related art. Dissimilar to FIG. 1, FIG. 2 illustrates a method of providing a service in such a manner that a manufacturer or a separate service provider constructs a web server 210 online 110. Here, a user may access a device 220, for example, an IoT node, through the online web server 210. In this case, a module, for example, a Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTTP) adaptor 230, for communication with the web server 210 may be mounted to the device 220. Accordingly, data generated by the device 220 and all of process logics to process a predetermined function or service may be provided online. Depending on necessity, data may be present in the device 220 and the process logics may be present in the web server 210. In this case, issues, such as the web service availability performance of the manufacturer or the separate service provider and the permanency of hosting, may arise.
Referring to FIGS. 1 and 2, the user may not access the device 130 embedded with the embedded web server 140 through the web server 210, and may not access the web server 210 or the device 220 through the embedded web server 140 of the device 130. That is, exchange of information between object instances is impossible and thus, an interactive or fused service may not be provided.
Additionally, referring to FIG. 2, since the device 220 is to provide, to the web server 210, information obtained from a thing such as a sensor or personal information of a user such as a location of the user in order to provide a service, a privacy issue of the user may occur.